The Mercenary

by Paul Vidich

  Posner turned to his colleague. “Let me introduce Deputy Chairman Churgin.”

  Churgin nodded once, but he scowled as if irritated at being in the room, and he made no effort to be pleasant. His hand stayed at his side as he gazed at Garin.

  The next head of the KGB, Garin thought. He stared back.

  Posner intervened. “What have you found so far? Does our winter appeal to you?”

  “Appeal?” Garin smiled. “Endure.” He used the Russian word.

  Posner’s eyebrow raised. “Your accent is unusual. Perhaps you’re an émigré. I’ve met children of émigré Russians who come looking for their grandparents’ villages, which they left to escape the Bolsheviks. Are you one?”

  “I was told you could help me.”

  “I can’t fix traffic tickets.”

  “I want to interview a vocal critic. Someone fed up with the Party.” He stirred his drink with his finger and met Deputy Chairman Churgin’s eyes. Garin had encountered Churgin years before in a different context, in a different country, with a different problem, but he saw the same smug hostility on his face. “A dissident.”

  Garin gave a casual critique of the Soviet Union’s human rights abuses, putting on the careless show of a man eager to prove his importance. His cheeks had blushed from alcohol, and his voice deepened. In the space of two drinks he had been able to put on the convincing act of a dissolute drinker with dangerous opinions. He raised his empty glass. “To free expression. I want to meet an artist who proves the exception to the rule of censorship.” He looked at Deputy Chairman Churgin. “If such a person exists.”

  Churgin turned to Posner. “Send him to Golukov.”

  “Good choice,” Posner said. “A painter. He lives two hours from Moscow. You need a special permit to drive there, but you can join me. My colleague will drive us. She is familiar with the roads.”

  Posner called to a tall woman nearby who was watching the jazz pianist play an up-tempo Dixieland tune. She wore a black strapless gown and silver earrings that swung as she turned her head. Her scarlet lips parted with an audible gasp when she faced Garin.

  “Do you know each other?” Posner asked. He looked between Garin and his colleague. “Is that possible?”

  “Anything’s possible,” she said. “Natalya Alexieva.”

  Natalya’s eyes on Garin were severe, as if forgetting her manners, but then she put forward her hand to meet Garin’s, which she shook once, forcefully.

  “Alek Garin,” he said.

  “He looks at you with surprise,” Posner said.

  “Tolerant surprise,” she said, “to your ridiculous suggestion.” She spoke to Posner, but all the while she looked at Garin, speaking about him as if he wasn’t there. Then she addressed him, judging him like a new dress she wasn’t certain she wanted to try on. “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Garin. May you have great success in our country.”

  She stopped a passing waiter with an upraised tray of champagne flutes and plucked one. “You are behaving badly, Mr. Garin,” she said. “You are staring at me. Maybe you think we have met.”

  Garin’s surprise was gone, but his memory was alive. Her raven hair was the same, dark eyes the same, and her rudeness identical. All that was different was the flute of champagne she held where she had once held a white rose.

  “Perhaps you think we’ve met because you saw me onstage. In London, perhaps,” she went on. “I’ve had men come up to me and claim they know me, but of course, it’s impossible. Do you enjoy the ballet, Mr. Garin?”

  “No.”

  She raised an offended eyebrow. “That shows only that you haven’t seen the right ballet. Ballet has something for everyone, even someone who says it is not to their taste. It was my life.” She presented her Ace-bandaged ankle. “And now it is not.”

  Garin snagged a flute of champagne. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s a stupid thing to say,” she said. “Something an Englishman would say.” Having raised the topic of England, she continued on, aware of the English ambassador nearby. “I lived in England as a child. English food and manners were not to my taste. I found that English people wanted to turn me into a suffering victim of a totalitarian regime.” She laughed. “It made them feel good about themselves when I described life in Moscow, and they would commiserate. How sad. How terrible. And then they would suggest that I defect. My father was in the embassy, so the suggestion was ridiculous—me, a young girl, defect. When I returned to London as a ballerina they said, Now, Natalya, you’re an adult.” She looked at Garin with a tolerant smile. “I don’t dance anymore, and they no longer ask.”

  “What does a ballerina who no longer dances do?”

  “I work with Comrade Posner, the Cultural ministry. And you? What do you do?”

  “Human rights.”

  She smiled. “In the Soviet Union, we have human rights and human writers. Sometimes they are the same, and sometimes they are different. Some of our writers go to jail. The longer their sentence, the larger their public. It’s different in America. Your popular writers count for nothing. They’re not regarded as dangerous, and no one pays attention, except to be entertained. They are free but irrelevant.” She looked at Garin. “Which is the better life? Free and irrelevant, or influential and in jail?”

  “You talk like a writer.”

  “I talk the way I think.” She smiled. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  Comrade Posner intervened. “You should know, Mr. Garin, the KGB could destroy samizdat in two days, but they don’t. And why? It can be useful to let the mice play.” Posner held a cocktail cigarette holder and knocked the long ash from his Marlboro into his palm. He turned to Natalya. “Golukov would make a good interview.”

  Still holding ash in his palm, Posner turned back to Garin. “He is outspoken, but he is a good portrait artist, so the Party elite sit for him. We will go together.”

  The others drifted to the bar or to another conversation, and suddenly Garin found himself alone with Natalya. They glanced at each other, but their eyes drifted, and neither spoke. She looked for an excuse to leave, but then abruptly faced him.

  “You were rude in the cemetery, and you are still rude. We should forget that we met. It is best for both of us,” she said brusquely. “I will drive you to Golukov. When is a good time? Tomorrow? Noon?”

  “And Posner?”

  “He is available tomorrow at noon.”

  Later, when he remembered the conversation, he recorded his surprise in his notebook. Nothing is ever that easy.

  * * *

  THE CHANDELIER’S LIGHTS grew brighter, the jazz band played loud jitterbug music, and an opera of voices tried heroically to keep up conversation. The laughter got boozy, and minute by minute the party’s conviviality grew higher in pitch. Groups formed and dissolved, swelling again as new arrivals from the cold warmed to the room’s blazing excitement. Birds chirped in the aviary, and the seal on its melting ice block became languid in the deafening noise, like an intimidated guest. All around, single men wandered, looking morose, and confident girls in long dresses had men following them, offering compliments.

  It was just then that Garin heard his name called. He’d taken a position behind the pianist so that he could look out at the room without appearing to observe the crowd. He turned at the sound of his name and saw Ronnie approaching with two flutes of champagne, and being offered one, he accepted it and drank it at once.

  “I understand that you successfully managed to annoy the next head of the KGB,” she said. “Congratulations. You’ve got balls.”

  “I’ve encountered him before.”

  “You’ve met him?” She didn’t hide her surprise.

  “Encountered him. He wouldn’t remember.”

  A suburban Virginia cul-de-sac in late 1953. Another time, another world. The stranger’s face in a car parked across the street. His mother weeping in the window.

  “Years ago,” he said, “but we didn’t meet.”

  Ronnie’s smile vanis
hed, and she changed the subject. “I understand your trip to Golukov is arranged.” She raised her flute. “To success.”

  Garin tapped a waiter passing with a tray and discharged his empty flute. “Yes, all arranged. Did you have a hand in it?”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  “It’s not an insult.”

  “I’ll take it. Everyone is curious who else is here.” Her eyes were on him. “I’m curious about you. The solitary man always on the sidelines, scheming.”

  He nodded but said nothing.

  Ronnie’s eyes drifted across the room. “The KGB are here if you know how to spot them.” She pointed at Churgin, who was chatting with Posner. “He doesn’t have wide lapels, thick shoes, cuffed pants, or an ugly tie. That’s the stereotype. But the man who doesn’t look the part is the one you don’t suspect, and he’s the one to watch.”

  Garin contemplated Deputy Chairman Churgin, who he had never expected to see again. Velvet anger slowly filled a cold hollow in his chest and he felt the surreal drama of being in the same room with a man he had sworn to kill. His palms moistened at the memory of his oath, but his mind stayed clear. He considered how dangerous an adversary the man might be.

  Garin turned back to Ronnie, but she had seized a lime-colored cocktail from the raised tray of a passing waiter, downed it for courage, and stepped onto the dance floor. Her hands moved from her head to her knees, seductively traveling down her swaying hips. Heads turned to look, and the band leader instructed the clarinetist to vary his rhythm following her moves. There was a burst of applause when she completed her passionate tango.

  10 DACHA

  THE NEXT DAY, SHORTLY BEFORE two in the afternoon, under a sky darkened with a slow-moving storm, Natalya and Garin stood outside the bright red door of a dacha made of finely fitted logs caulked with mortar. Except for the wisp of smoke rising straight into the air from a stone chimney, the two visitors had no sign anyone was home. Natalya’s three loud raps on the brass knocker had gone unanswered except for a dog’s tyrannical barking, and she was about to strike a fourth time when a voice inside called out.

  “Yes, yes. I am here. Don’t wake the grandchildren.”

  The door was thrown open, and an older man, shrunken with age, stood on the threshold, startled and briefly suspicious. He wore coarse wool pants tied at the waist with a cord, a bulky sweater, and sandals with socks. His thinning hair was gray and long, and what he’d lost on his balding head erupted from his ears, giving him the appearance of a hobbit. His eyes widened and his cranky voice hissed, and as he spoke he motioned his visitors forward.

  “Natasha, darling. Come in. Come in. The whole winter is entering while you stand there.” He nodded at her feet. “And you didn’t wear boots. You must think you’re still in Moscow. Hurry. Hurry. What a surprise.”

  “I called. I left a message with the housekeeper.”

  “I got it, but I was in the studio. I forget everything when I’m in the studio. Come in.”

  The two-story dacha was penetrated by small windows set deeply in the walls. They kept out the cold and the light. Garin followed Natalya and found himself in a small foyer crowded with boots, coats, hats, and scarves, and passing through, they came to the kitchen. A blue ceramic-tile oven hugged one wall and dominated the room. A short, stocky woman with flushed cheeks vigorously wiped her hands on a cloth apron.

  “My housekeeper,” the man said. Having been introduced, the woman smiled self-consciously, revealing a missing tooth.

  They passed from the kitchen to the living room, where a monstrous stone fireplace rose two stories and held glowing coals of a dying fire. It was a tall room full of mismatched furniture—a ponderous, claw-footed French Empire sofa faced two rustic wooden chairs, and everywhere the fastidious disorder of a forgetful man. Framed family photographs were propped on an antique breakfront, old copper-plated daguerreotypes of ancient relatives next to snapshots of children.

  “This is Vladmir Golukov,” Natalya said, prompting their host to turn.

  Golukov looked at Garin, as if for the first time. “And who are you?”

  “Aleksander Garin.”

  Golukov nodded judgmentally, taking a measure of Garin. “Posner said you want a portrait.” To Natalya, “Why didn’t Posner come?”

  “There was a problem,” she replied. “We aren’t here to buy a painting.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  “To talk.”

  “Talk? Sure, I have time for that. Let’s have some slivovitz. Talking is better if we drink.” He added, “You picked a bad day to visit.”

  “What’s wrong with today?”

  “A big storm is coming. But that won’t bother you. You’re young and foolish. I am old and wise.” He smiled. “And forgetful sometimes. But I’m not too old to enjoy the company of my Natasha.” He winked at Garin. “Beautiful, isn’t she? A gift to the eye.”

  “Then you’ve gone blind,” Natalya said. “You spend too much time with your nose on the canvas.”

  Golukov whispered confidentially to Garin, “I have several portraits of Stalin you can have for a good price. No one buys him anymore. Lenin, yes. Brezhnev, not so much.” He nodded at Natalya, who had moved ahead. “She scolds me that I go on like an old man, but I tell her I am an old man.”

  Golukov led them into a large studio with a stone floor, two skylights, and a woodstove with black piping that penetrated the roof. A large wooden table held tin cans overflowing with brushes, a field of misshapen, partly squeezed tubes of paint, and an ashtray filled with butts. A single easel stood in a rectangle of sunlight. It held an unfinished portrait of a young ballerina seated in a chair, knees apart, elbows on thighs, in a confident pose. Her black hair was tightly wound in a bun, her face was chalk white, and her eyes stared with an insolent expression.

  “It’s not finished,” Golukov said, pointing with his walking stick. “She won’t sit for the one hour I need. The eyes don’t work. Look at her.” He pointed at Natalya, who tolerated his attention. “The way she looks at me now. I need to paint that. Her tolerant irritation.”

  “Enough,” she said.

  “Don’t make her angry. She is a snake if provoked.”

  They had just arrived, but already Garin had the impression that Natalya wanted to leave. She kept looking at her watch and glanced out the window at the darkening sky. Garin thought she would have already grabbed him and departed if Golukov hadn’t been an insistent host. He prattled on with the determined garrulousness of a lonely man happy to have company, and he ignored Natalya’s impatience.

  “I am a painter,” Golukov said. “You would think that was obvious, but I had an East German here once, an educated man, who looked at the portraits on the wall and asked how I had come to collect so many. He didn’t believe there were painters in the Soviet Union who weren’t in prison.”

  Golukov pointed at the walls of the studio, where there were portraits of grim Soviet Party bosses in dark suits and haughty, overweight, middle-aged women in military uniforms.

  “These clients didn’t like what they saw and refused to pay. They are my gallery of unhappy vanities. You know,” Golukov said mischievously, “everyone thinks they are more handsome than they are. Everyone wants to look younger or thinner, or more important, or to be shown without the mole on the chin. That is my challenge—not to change the painting, which I would never do, but to convince the client that the painting is an improvement. Sometimes they agree, and sometimes they cry or rage. It’s a trick to get them to look honestly. Who looks in the mirror and says, ‘How lovely my mole is’?” He nodded at Natalya. “She is an exception. She is perfect, don’t you think?”

  “Stop it,” she scoffed. “You’ll embarrass me. Now, it’s time for us to go.”

  “You just got here. Here’s the food. Sit. Eat.”

  The housekeeper, who’d entered the room, put down a tray of sausage, black bread, cheese, pickled beets, and strong tea.

  “Why didn’t Posner come?�
� Golukov asked, his lazy eye judging Garin.

  Before Garin could answer, a child no more than seven years old ran into the room, but she stopped suddenly when she saw the guests.

  “Come here, child,” Golukov said. “Meet an American; touch him, if you like. They have skin like us, eyes like us, they bleed like us, and they eat the food we eat. Yes, they are like us.”

  Garin took his granddaughter in his lap and kissed her cheek, making her squirm. When he released the startled child, she fled the room.

  “In school,” he said, “they are taught scandalous things. Americans have fangs. They eat children. Everyone is on heroin. Milka has never seen an American. I am sure she is in her bedroom exclaiming to her brother that she’s seen you and, ‘My God, he has no fangs.’ ”

  Golukov chuckled, then looked at Garin. “Did they tell you I’m a dissident?” The old man led them to another room off the studio. The light overhead illuminated a windowless, cramped space, with many oil paintings hanging on the walls. Each canvas was a washed field of white dotted with dense, black squares that differed in size, number, and position from canvas to canvas but were otherwise identical. “My decadent art,” Golukov said proudly. “I am like artists everywhere. I paint for myself, I paint for friends, and I paint for money.”

  He looked at Natalya, who had become nervous at his long-windedness. He pumped his hands for her to calm herself. “The drive is two hours. It’s the same time if you leave now or in ten minutes.”

  “The storm is coming.”

  He shook his head and looked at Garin. “I got in trouble when a French critic saw these. His review said that I had drawn an impassable line between old and new, between God and his devil, between life and death. The word ‘God’ got the KGB’s attention. Three of them showed up. Smart men, but obviously literal and dull, and uneducated in art. I had to explain that the French critic was making things up. I pointed at the paintings. I said, ‘What do you see? God? Life and death?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Look. Black squares on a white canvas. That’s all.’ After sharing a glass of vodka, they became convinced.”